


Unspoken

by zinke



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Missing Scene, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-13
Updated: 2008-07-13
Packaged: 2018-09-17 06:07:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9308687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zinke/pseuds/zinke
Summary: He wants – needs – her to realize that faith, like love, isn’t a straight line.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to survivalinstinct.net on July 13, 2008.
> 
> I began writing this story shortly after Six of One originally aired, and through its many incarnations I made a conscious decision not to make adjustments as subsequent episodes aired; any inconsistencies with series canon through the mid-season finale are therefore intentional (and very minor). 
> 
> That said, clearly this story contains spoliers through the season 4 episode Six of One.
> 
> Many thanks go, as always, to Caz for being the picky beta I’ve come to love, and to nnaylime for her ever thoughtful suggestions and insight.

* * * *  
_and of course I forgive_  
I've seen how you live  
like a phoenix you rise from the ashes  
you pick up the pieces  
and the ghosts in the attic  
they never quite leave  
and of course I forgive  
you've seen how I live  
I've got darkness and fears to appease  
my voices and analogies  
ambitions like ribbons  
worn bright on my sleeve

_-Eric’s Song, Vienna Teng_

* * * *

Bill takes a moment to relish the sound of the door to the head slamming shut behind him, then finishes off his drink in a single, desperate swallow. His relief is short-lived; even in here the air is thick with words both said and unsaid, and he can feel them coiling tightly around his throat like a band of thorns. Setting the empty glass on the edge of the sink, he braces his hands against the countertop, drops his chin to his chest and closes his eyes against the unwanted guilt that is beginning to press its advantage as his anger ebbs, tearing at his battered defenses and all but finishing the job Laura had started a few minutes ago.

She had no frakking right. 

From the moment they’d met, Laura had seemed to possess an uncanny ability to see right through him, past his carefully crafted Admiral’s façade to the ordinary man underneath. It is a trait he both admires and resents in equal measure, though his umbrage is more often than not due to her willingness to exploit whatever chinks she’s found in his armor than to her being able to correctly identify them in the first place. 

 

_"This isn't military, it's personal. Neither of you can let go of Kara Thrace because she's your last link to Zak. You've lost perspective."_

 

As much as he enjoys the fragile intimacy they’ve cultivated between them, there are some things he’s not – and may never be – wholly willing to share. His many flaws and foibles are his burden and his alone to bear; their continued existence will never be something of which he needs reminding – least of all by her.

Glancing up, he sees his reflection in the mirror, sees every one of those faults laid bare in the lines and crags on his weary face. Haunted, bloodshot eyes stare back at him, conspicuously lackluster from this evening’s excessive indulgence in liquor, emotion and truth. Even a man as practiced at subjugation as he is can only withstand so much and Bill had known from the moment he’d sat down beside her that the fight to keep himself in check would be lost. It had been – gods dammit, it still is – too much. 

 

_"Bill, you’ve gotta face this."_

 

Suddenly desperate to clear his head, Bill straightens and begins working at the buttons of his uniform jacket, searching for solace in the familiar machinations of his nightly routine. Turning on the faucet, he splashes handful after handful of icy water against his face, welcoming the numbness that seeps into his skin even as he wills the sensation deeper, wanting a similar respite from the stifling emotions he’s been struggling with since the moment Kara’s voice crackled back to life over the wireless. 

Laura Roslin. Kara Thrace. Bill wants to – and if he’s honest with himself already does – trust both of them. But he knows full well that his reasons are anything but empirical. He loves them both; and he’ll be the first to admit that its been a long time since he’s been able to clearly differentiate between his duty and the dictates of his heart. Despite his best efforts, he is no different from the rest of them: one of thirty-nine thousand people looking for something to cling to in the wake of an unspeakable tragedy. And like the others, he finds himself longing for a respite, a home, a life defined by more than war and fear. That hope has colored his every decision, his every order since the day he walked the path of gods and stood in a tomb beneath the stars of another world. Laura’s gift to him – this life, this path; for better or for worse, there is no returning it now. 

With a heavy sigh, he shuts off the water and reaches for a towel. In the resulting quiet, he can hear her moving around just beyond the door and he is suddenly struck by an irrational fear that she is planning to leave. In his mind’s eye he can see her tucking those things most vital to her – a change of clothes, her files, the photograph that she keeps by her side like a touchstone – into her bag, and his heart lurches painfully in response. He doesn’t want her to leave; if she does, he knows with a frightening certainty that with her would go any hope of repairing the damage they’d wrought to this new facet of their relationship. Little by little, she would inevitably pull away from him just as he would inevitably – though with great reluctance – let her go. 

 

 _"Alright Bill, I don’t know what you want me to do here. Should I leave?"_

 

He’s gotten used to her presence – not only in his quarters these past few days but in his life, his thoughts … his heart. And he’s not ready to give that up. Which, he finally allows himself to admit, is one of the things that got him into this mess in the first place. Now he can only hope that the same truth will give him the strength to go out there and find a way to mend things between them.

The tell-tale sounds of her moving around on the opposite side of the door have ceased, and the ensuing silence only serves to heighten the nagging ache in Bill’s chest. Hurriedly he retrieves his glass from its perch by the sink and turns to open the door – and nearly drops the tumbler a moment later when he is confronted by the sight of Laura standing only inches away on the other side of the threshold. 

"May I?" she asks stonily, clutching her neatly folded pajamas protectively to her chest as she brushes past him without waiting for an answer. Automatically he steps aside, and before he’s able to even register what’s happened she’s closed the door quietly behind her, shutting him out as effectively as he’d done to her a few minutes earlier. But it would seem that – for tonight at least – she isn’t planning on leaving. On the one hand he’s relieved; but on the other, he knows full well the uphill battle he’s got ahead of him. 

He wants – needs – her to realize that faith, like love, isn’t a straight line; even if the thing in which you believe remains constant, the nature of how and why you believe inevitably can – and will – evolve. On Kobol, he’d found the strength of Laura’s belief in the prophecies to be utterly captivating – and though Kara’s expression of her devotion was decidedly more… animated than Laura’s, he’d felt a similar pull as she’d struggled to recount the details of her own experience. He wants to believe Kara because of what he sees in Laura, not in spite of it; and it pains him to think that she resents him for the faith she’s helped him to discover. 

That doesn’t mean, however, that he won’t to try and force the issue with her tonight. Decision made, he releases another heavy sigh and begins to make his way slowly through the confines of his dimly lit cabin as his mind continues its relentless churning. Where they’d earlier rung with necessary truth, the words he’d hurled at her now seem small, petulant and cruel. It was wholly unlike them; no matter how heated the argument might get, they rarely – if ever – said anything with the sole intention of wounding the other. He’d asked her for consolation; and instead she’d given him bitter reality, left him feeling raw and exposed and so he’d reacted in the only way he knew how – by lashing out. He simply hadn’t expected her to follow suit and sink to his level.

Pushing aside a sheaf of Laura’s papers, Bill sets his glass on the table and continues on his way to the bookshelf, already mentally rifling through his many titles for something to help pass the time and perhaps settle his restless mind. It’s only after he’s made his selection and pulled the dusty book from the shelf that he notices something is amiss. The uncharacteristic sight of the chaos of open dossiers and loose pages that Laura – always meticulously neat and organized – has left spread across the table causes his heartbeat to quicken uncomfortably as he realizes he may not be the only one reeling from the impact of their harsh words. 

Moving back to the table, his eyes scan the jumble of papers as if the solution to the situation in which he’s found himself can be found in the tedious lines of the weekly rations report Laura had been reading earlier. It is not the document’s neat typeset, however, that ultimately captures his attention.

It’s nothing more than a doodle, really – though like the mess spread across the tabletop, its inconsistency with what he knows of her is disconcerting. The muted lamplight brings the drawing’s simple lines, which appear to have been etched into the page from repeated retracing, into sharp relief, and he wonders just what it was that had fueled her preoccupation. Had she been formulating her attack before he’d even stepped through the door, or had it been something more innocuous – the diloxin treatment sapping her energy and blurring her thoughts? 

 

_"What do we do now? Put her on trial? Follow her into an ambush?"_

 

Curious, he reaches out to turn the report towards him. As the words right themselves, the drawing similarly becomes clear, and he realizes with a start that it is not some random abstract shape arching across the corner of the page but a comet, its tail feathering out behind it like a banner. 

Kara’s comet, he recognizes a beat later; and without warning he feels the answer to his earlier question hit him like a sucker punch to the gut. 

Without question, she’d been baiting him. But what he hadn’t understood until now was that it hadn’t really been an argument she’d wanted from him. And he, inhibitions dampened by alcohol and frustration, had responded to her none-too-subtle prodding by laying into her, giving voice and life to the very fears she’d been looking to him to allay. 

 

 _"You’re afraid you may not be the dying leader you thought you were. Or that your death will be as meaningless as everyone else’s."_

 

Dropping bonelessly into the nearest chair, Bill closes his eyes and cradles his now aching head in his hands in an attempt to block out the memory of those sweeping pen marks and his spiteful words. He’d been too preoccupied by his own indecision and pain to be able to see past the President’s brittle words and razor-sharp jibes and realize that Laura was terrified that the decisions and sacrifices she’s made on behalf of her people no longer matter and that she herself has somehow become insignificant. 

The light in the cabin dims abruptly and it takes him a moment to realize it’s because the lamp in the far room has been extinguished. The rustle of fabric draws his gaze to his rack, where he can just make out Laura’s familiar form in the shadows as she lays with her back to the room, curled into the bulkhead with the covers pulled tightly around her as if to ward off any unwanted advance.

He rises from the chair and makes his way to Laura’s side as if drawn there by instinct. Her skin looks unnaturally pale against the dark hue of the bed sheets, and he’s disconcerted by how small and fragile she seems. Despite how close they’ve become, he’s still not entirely used to seeing her like this, her carefully crafted Presidential façade put away to reveal the beautiful, complicated soul beneath. But he knows that these glimpses of the woman behind the office are not something Laura has revealed to him lightly. She’s reaching out, searching for solace in a world that has shifted irrevocably on its axis, struggling – as he is – to find her place in this new and unfamiliar landscape. 

He wants to protect her; more importantly he wants her to let him. And so in the unsettled darkness of his cabin he makes her a silent promise, and hopes that it will be enough – for both of them.

 

_"When you think you love somebody, you love them. That’s what love is."_

 

Quietly he shucks off his pants and drawing back the blankets, he slips into the rack beside her, studiously disregarding the feel of her body tensing against his as he lays back and settles the covers around them both. The silence between them seems to grow heavier as he rests, hands folded tightly over his chest in an attempt to quell the anxious thrumming of his heart, and tries to work out what he should say to her. Beside him, Laura shifts and pulls herself impossibly closer to the bulkhead – and he finds he can’t bear the loss of contact.

Bill doesn’t stop to think about what he’s doing or what the repercussions will be; and in any case, he’s always had more confidence in actions than in words. Rolling on his side towards her, he slides an arm around Laura’s waist and gathers her body to his, hoping that it will be enough and she will understand. It takes what feels like hours, but eventually he feels her relax against him, curling her back more snugly against his chest as she gently laces her fingers through his. He releases a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, tucks his chin into the crook of her neck and tries to memorize the scent of her hair.

 

_"No one’s going anywhere."_

 

The soft skin of her cheek brushes against his nose a beat before her voice, hesitant and hushed, breaks the fragile silence between them. "Bill?"

He says nothing in response, all too aware that the fragile truce between them is just that, and that tomorrow the debate over what’s to be done will begin anew. Instead, he tightens his hold on her, closes his eyes and listens to the sound of her breathing as he allows sleep to claim him. 

 

*fin.*


End file.
